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Farm Prosperity in 
_ . Forsyth 


a The City and the Country 
> End of the Problem 3 


oe ADDRESS BY 
_ Dr. E. C: BRANSON 
+ Rural Economics and Sociology 


SS 


University of North Carolina 


COMPLIMENTS 

“ BOARD OF TRADE 
| __ Winston-Salem, N. C. 
Ms” dk Reb'y 24th, 1917 


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Cape, * 
+ ; : 


Farm Prosperity in 


Forsyth 


The City and the Country 
End of the Problem 


ADDRESS BY 
Dr. E. C. BRANSON 


Rural Economics and Sociology 
University of North Carolina \ 


COMPLIMENTS 


BOARD OF TRADE 
Winston-Salem, N. C., 
Feb’y 24th, 1917 


oF 


' 


The City End of the Proplem 


CHAPTER I. 


Twin City Leadership 


In my-bread-and-butter days Winston was a 
commonplace village of fewer than 500 people. 
Salem was then and is now a little community 
of unforgettable loveliness. Together you are 
to-day a beautiful city of some 30,000 souls or 
more. In the last thirty years your manufact- 
uring capital has increased thirty-five fold and 
your manufactured output fifty fold. These 
increases have been seven fold within the last 
fifteen years. In thirteen years your taxable 
property has been quadrupled. During the last 
six years your public school property has more 
than doubled in value and your annual expend- 
iture for public school maintenance has more 
than quadrupled. 


Winston-Salem leads the cities of the State 
in manufacture. You distance your nearest 
competitor by eight million dollars in capitai 
and by ten million dollars in annual products. 
A full tenth of the manufacturing capital of the 
entire state is centered here. 


First In the United States 


This year you pass St. Louis as a tobacco 
manufacturing center, and now you hold the 
first place in the United States in this industry.” 
The Federal tax you pay on tobacco products 
has multiplied ten times over since 1890. In 
a single week it amounts to nearly enough to 
pay for your new $250,000 government building. 
In a quarter century the capital employed in 
your tobacco factories has increased twenty 
fold and the output nearly forty fold. A fourth 


4 


of all the smoking and chewing tobacco con- 
sumed in the United States is manufactured 
here, and a seventh of all the tobacco products 
of every sort made in the Union. The statisti- 
cal picture of the Twin City is amazing. And 
but for the backing of the Federal authorities, 
it staggers belief. — 


But best of all, as you have gained in wealth 
you have manifestly gained in willingness to 
convert your wealth into social advantages— 
into schools, churches, public health and san- 
itation, hospitals, reformatories, and charitable 
institutions. You have built a beautiful, pros- 
perous little city. It is good to go round about 
it and to mark the towers and bulwarks thereof. 
It is commonplace to say in North Carolina that 
Winston-Salem has a rare record of distinguish- 
ed achievements. 


The Next Great Thing To Do 


The next great thing for Winston-Salem and 
\ every other growing city to do is to build up a 
~ prosperous back-country; not on the basis of 
sentiment alone, but as a policy of enlightened 
self-interest—to use a favorite phrase of John 
C. Calhoun. No city can salefly grow fat in a 
lean countryside. Secure foundations for abid- 
ing prosperity in The Twin City must be laid 
upon farm prosperity, good cheer, and high 
courage in your surrounding trade territory. 


Farm Situation in Forsyth 


While your city flourishes your farm regions 
languish. 


The per capita country wealth in farm prop- 
erties in Forsyth in 1910 was only $333 against 
$994 in the United States, $8380 in Oklahoma 
and $3,386 in Iowa. 

One hundred thirty-eight thousand acres of 
your land is uncultivated; 57 per cent of your 
county is an idle wilderness area. With 50,000 
acres reserved for woodlot uses, there is elbow- 


5 


room in Forsyth for 1200 new farm families on 
75 acres each. 

Your cattle number only 34 and your swine 
only 41 per thousand acres. In 1910 you had 
in the county only 637 cattle more than in 1860; 
while during this period your swine fell from 
18,900 to 7,700, and your sheep from 6,300 to 

55. 

ia the census year your farmers raised wheat, 
hay and forage enough for home consumption, 
but during the census period they fell back 
nearly 40 thousand bushels in corn production. 
In 1910 the county needed to import more than 
a ‘oiliion bushels of western corn and corn 
products, and 942 or 36 per cent of your farmers 
had to buy feed for their farm animals, the 
expenditures for this purpose averaging $60.20 
per farm. 


Behind in Food Production 7 


This same year, the food and feed products 
of Forsyth fell short of feeding the farm popu- 
lation and the farm animals of the county by 
6979.000, while the standard, staple foodstuffs 
consumed by both the town and country popu- 
lations amounted to two and three-quarter mil- 
lioa dollars more than the farms of the con 
produced. 

Your farmers not only lost nearly a mation 
dollars by failing to raise their own supplies 
at home, but they missed supplying a market 
demand for staple foods by Winston-Salem con- 
sumers amounting to nearly two million dollars 
more, to say nothing of the still larger demand 
for such supplies in the wider trade territory 
of the city. 

The simple fact is that Winston-Salem is not 
_the center of a well-developed food-producing 
area. Your bill for foodstuffs imported for 
consumption in Forsyth county alone in the 
census year covered three and a half million 
pounds of meat, one and a quarter million 
pounds of butter, a million bushels of corn, 


6 


nearly four hundred thousand fowls, and a half 
million dozen eggs. In that year you sent out 
of the county $2,800,000 in ready cash for these 
and similar staple food supplies. It is a king’s 
ransom, and its loss left everybody in the 
county just so much the poorer—farmers, mer- 
chants, bankers, and city consumers ail. 


Forsyth County Studies 


This brief exhibit of your farm situation is 
based on intensive Forsyth studies made by 
your men at the University during the last two 
years—Messrs. John Tucker Day, R. G. Stock- 
ton, W. C. Wright, Jr., Wilson Dalton, and D. 
Hill Carlton. They have been diligently ex- — 
amining the foundations of life and business in 
their home county. They believe with Milton 
that— 

Prime wisdom is 


Not to know at large of things remote, 
But that which daily lies about us. 


Your Chamber of Commerce could do no bet- 
ter thing than to publish for general circula- 
tion their studies of Forsyth County: Hconomic 
and Social. 


Where Winston-Salem Lags 


The farms of Forsyth are easily able to pro- 
duce all the staple food supplies needed by the 
population and the domestic animals of the 
county. For instance, 31 of your Corn Club 
boys last year averaged 55 bushels to the acre. 
At this rate the entire corn acreage of Forsyth 
would have produced corn enough for the coun- 
ty and a surplus of 288,000 bushels to market 
abroad. Your farmers are amply able to pro- 
duce all the beef, pork, and mutton, butter, 
poultry and eggs, grain, hay, and forage, vege- 
tables, fruits and flowers demanded by local 
consumers. 


They do not now produce these supplies in 
adequate abundance for a single, simple reason 


7 


—they cannot be turned into ready cash in 
Winston-Salem at a fair price and profit. Which 


means that your city has not yet solved her ¥ 


lecal market problem—the problem of local 
markets for home-raised breadstuffs. You 


have solved your tobacco market problem but ' 


no other. Your market for meat, fish and 
oysters is perhaps the least satisfactory thing 
in your city. And your general produce mar- 
ket seems to be a necessity not yet fully real- 
ized. 
Self-Defensive Interest 


Local markets for home-raised food supplies 
offer the largest single business problem that 
modern city statesmanship faces today. The 
beak-and-talon law of trade has brought New 
York and Chicago to their knees at last, and 
both these cities now have expensive commis- 
sions at work upon the critical problem of mar- 
keting food supplies. The increase in the cost 
of living is unbearable. The price of every ex- 
istence necessity has skyrocketed into the 
upper ether. The wherewithal to feed and 
clothe, shelter and warm the multitudes is a 
fundamental concern that now menaces our 
great industrial centers. It is an inescapable 
problem for developing factory centers of every 
size everywhere. 

If Winston-Salem must haul in over long dis- 
tances nearly three million dollars worth of 
breadstuffs annually, a swarming multitude 
of middlemen must be rewarded. Imported 
food supplies mean inflated bills for city con- 
sumers. The rising cost of living compels an 
increase in the scale of wages—as Adam Smith 
saw a century and a half ago. When the labor 
- cost of production increases, the dividends of 
capital decrease or disappear. If the wage 
scale does not increase with the cost of living, 
then the wage earner’s standard of living must 
be lowered; and in free democracies, this 
means unrest, chronic discontent, labor unions, 


f 


A 


apaccen 


8 


and strike situations—inevitably so. For a 
quarter century this menace to manufacture 
has been rising toward a full flood tide in the 
great industrial areas north of the Ohio and 
east of the Mississippi. 


The Evil Day Ahead 


The evil day of wage and labor troubles has 
not yet come upon the South—or so, only in an 
industrial center or two where city leadership 
has been stolidly unconcerned about local mar- 
ket problems and the cost of living. Winston- 
Salem has long been famed far and wide for 
excellent labor conditions. But North and 
South, the future of every manufacturing cen- 
ter is now critically related (1) to a prosperous 
food-preducing farm civilization in the nearby 
trade treritory, and (2) to effective local mar- 
kets for home-raised food supplies of every sort. 


The Local Market Problem 


Effective local markets lower the cost of 
living by bringing consumers and producers 
together with mutual advantage; and the prob- 
lem is solved when consumers get more for 
their money and producers get more for their 
products. These results are the acid test of 
success. If city consumers do not pay less for 
their supplies while the farmers get more for 
their food products, the problem is not solved 
no matter how elaborate the arrangements or 
how expensive the market house. In the light 
of this principle, it will be seen that city mar- 
kets can easily be costly, sorry jokes upon the 
community, as in Raleigh, Greensboro, and 
Durham. 

It is possible—not easy but possible—to lessen 
market costs by promoting direct dealings be- 
tween producers and consumers living side by 
side in same county orcommunity. First of all 
success in the undertaking calls for the market- 
ing habit on part of housewives; and then for 
well managed, centrally located public markets 


9 


with cold storage chambers for perishable pro- 
ducts; for credit accomodations on stored pro- 


Cian rege 


duce whenever necessary; for ample, open mar- | 


ket spaces devoted to free, open air trading; for 
convenient public hitching grounds, camping’ 


sheds, and feeding stalls; for indications of city 
hospitality—restrooms with lavatory and toilet 
conveniences, chairs, tables, books, magazines 
and newspapers; and for a free telephone mar- 
ket exchange in the city hall or chamber of 
commerce, operated by a competent clerk 
whose business it is to acquaint consumers with 
the sources of neighborhood supply, and to 
advise the farmers about the wants, standards 
and tastes of customers in the nearby town; for 
co-operative city delivery service, and so on 
and on. These are some of the plans and pro- 
jects that I find in various alert city centers. 


A Critical Urgency 


The local market problem is always intricate 
and difficult. Nowhere has it been perfectly 
solved, but everywhere the critical urgency 
of its sclution becomes apparent. The lack 
of ready cash markets for home-raised food 
supplies is at one and the same time the great- 
est hindrance to a prosperous agriculture in 
your trade territory and the greatest menace 
to developing manufacture in your city. And 
in sheer self-defense, Winston-Salem must join 
hands with the farmers of the county in solving 
this probiem. It cannot be solved by the city 
alone, nor by the countryside alone. Organiz- 
ed effort at solution calls for generous co-oper- 
ation on part of business men and farmers, con- 
sumers and producers. The solution lies in 
collusion not in collision, in co-operation not in 
contest. An active county-wide board of trade 
is a long step forward. Rockingham, Gaston, 
Guilford, Wilson, and Mecklenburg are now 
moving in this direction. 

Your problem of local markets for home- 
raised breadstuffs is a three million dollar pro- 


10 


position and it calls for business genius and 
skill. 

It is a difficult problem, and nothing less 
than a generous, full statured statesmanship 
will avail to spell it out in effective practical 
ways. It is a highly technical detail of com- 
petent city management. The safe solution of 
this problem is far more important to your 
city than the governorship of the State or the 
presidency of the United States. 


A prosperous agriculture in Forsyth waits 


|} / upon the iniative and leadership of the Twin, 


' City, and the Twin City is big and generous 
enough to realize that the foundations of her 
future greatness. must rest upon prosperity, 
good cheer, and high courage in her couniry- 
side. 


The County End of the Problem 


CHAPTER II. 


A Rare Occasion 


1. Last November the business people, the 
teachers and preachers of Winston-Salem came 
together in a large audience in the Twin-City 
Club to consider the subject of Farm Prosper- 
ity in Forsyth. Occasions like that have so 
far been extremely rare in the United States. 

As a rule cities have been concerned chiefly 
with their own prosperity—with attracting into 
city limits larger populations and more manu- 
facturing plants, with creating larger volumes 
of business and larger fortunes in real estate 
deals, and with the pressing problems of well- 
being in crowded human centers. They have 
commonly been callously unconcerned about 
the wealth and welfare problems of the sur- 
rounding country regions. County-wide school 
systems that put the entire wealth of a county 
behind the schools in poor country districts 
and in rich city wards alike have usually been 
bitterly opposed in city centers. More efficient 
country churches, more and better Sunday 
schools, more attractive country homes with 
more conveniences, comforts and _ luxuries, 
greater attention to public health and sanita- 
tion, and larger barns and bank balances for 
the farmers have long been matters of profound 
indifference to city dwellers everywhere. 


A Right Attitude 


But Winston-Salem has come to believe that 
-no city liveth to itself alone, and so is willing 
to take generous thought of the country reg- 
ions round about. 

The time has gone by when any city can 
safely grow fat in a lean country-side. Every 


12 


developing city must be the center of a well 
developed food-producing area. The best way 
to build up a town is to build up a prosperous 
back-country. The city depends upon the coun- 
try for food, clothing, and shelter. The coun- 
try depends upon the city for market advan- 
tages and credit facilities. They are mutually 
dependent, and the problems of neither can be 
solved without the help of the other. 

But even more. The cities are dependent 
upon the country for population and the re- 
newal of population. If city populations were 
not steadily recruited from the open fields they 
would rot out, explode and disappear in three 
generations, said Emerson. Three-fourths of 
the leaders in our city churches, three-fourths 
of the influential men of affairs, the business 
men, the bankers, the lawyers and judges in 
our cities, five-sixths of the college professors 
of America, and six-sevenths of the ministers 
were born, bred, and “buttered” in the country 
regions. 

These are some of the things my city aud- 
ience heard me say last November, and heard 
with generous interest and indulgent patience. 
And when I added that the next great thing for 
Winston-Salem to do, in my opinion, was to 
help the farmers of her trade territory solve 
their problems of life and business, and gener- 
ously to promote prosperity, good cheer, and 
high courage in the countryside, there was an 
instant, active response. 

And so on this occasion I come with the peo- 
ers the Farmers’ end of the Problem of Farm 
ers, the Farmers’ end of the Problem of Farm 
Prosperity in Forsyth. 


The Farmer’s End of the Problem 


2. I want to look at the Farmers’ End of 
Farm Prosperity in Forsyth from three angles: 
(1) Where Forsyth Leads, (2) Where Forsyth 
Lags, and (3) The Way Out. 

In advance I remind you that the facts and 


18 


figures I shall use were worked out of the 1910 
Census and other authoritative volumes by 
your own boys at the University; that the sur- 
pluses and deficits are based on the averages of 
annual consumption announced by the Federal 
Department of Agriculture from time to time; 
that Forsyth has doubtless moved up in food 
and feed production along with all the rest of 
the state since 1910; but also that only once 
every ten years can a county take stock of it- 
self in any thorough-going way. We have re- 
ports on crops and livestock by states year by 
year, but, cotton excepted, we have no reports 
on agriculture in detail by counties oftener than 
every tenth year. The 1320 Census, then, can 
alone tell whether or not Forsyth is moving 
forward, marking time, or dropping to the rear 
in the essential concerns of farm civiliza- 
tion during the present census period. 


I. Where Forsyth Leads. 


Forsyth is a farm area of richly varied soils 
in the healthy, hill country of Piedmont Caro- 
lina. It was considered an ideal region for 
human habitation, when explored by the Mora- 
vian prospectors midway the 18th century. 
They might well have rendered their report in 
the words of Deuteronomy: 


“The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a 
good land, a land of brooks of water, of 
fountains and depths that spring out of 
valleys and hills; 

“A land of. wheat, and barley, and vines, 
and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land 
of oil and honey; 

“A land wherein thou shalt eat bread 
without scarceness, thou shalt not lack 
anything in it.” 

It is truly an ideal region for grain, hay and 
forage. It was meant by Nature to be a land 
of permanent pastures, silage crops, silos, dairy 
farms and creameries; for beef and pork pro- 


14 


duction, poultry and eggs; for nut crops, fruits 
and vegetables. And if it is not today a land 
of milk and honey, peace and plenty it is be- 
cause the farmers of Forsyth have worked not 
with but against Nature, and have resisted her 
kindliest efforts to dower them with her choic- 
est treasures. 


As a matter of fact, in a score or more sig- 
nificant particulars Forsyth in 1910 stood 
among the 25 counties of foremost agricultural 
importance in North Carolina. 


Ahead in Wheat, Hay and Forage. 


1. It was one of the 15 counties that raised 
enough wheat for home consumption and a sur- 
plus for sale abroad. Only ten counties, large 
or small, produced larger totals of hay and for- 
age. She produced enough for her work-ani- 
mals and a little to spare. In the total produc- 
tion of oats, only 15 counties made a better 
showing; and only four counties had a larger 
investment in labor-saving farm machinery per 
cultivated acre. 

And in Farm and Home Demonstration Work 


In Canning Club Work among the girls For- 
syth ranks along with Sampson, Anson, Lin- 
coln, and Wake both in numbers enrolled, con- 
tainers filled, and net profits earned. In corn 
Club Work the county ranked 8th in the num- 
ber of boys reporting and 10th in low average 
cost per bushel. 


In average per acre yield of corn in the Cen- 
sus year Forsyth stood 3 bushels an acre beyond 
the figure for the state-at-large. In 1916, 15 
of her Corn Club boys averaged 56 bushels to 
the acre, and if the county yearly imports 
more than a million bushels of western corn, 
as in 1910, it cannot be because of poor soils 
and seasons, but because the daddies have less 
corn-sense than the boys, or because a steadily 
increasing interest in tobacco breeds a curious 
unconcern about corn. cribs. Diminishing 


15 


food and feed production, as you doubtless 
know, is the usual result of cotton and tobacco 
mania in a farm area. And yet, good farmers 
will all agree, I think, that it is good sense and 
good business to raise corn at 32 cents a bush- 
el, the average of your Corn Club boys last 
year, instead of paying $1.50 for it as short- 
sighted farmers are doing to-day all over the 
state. 


A Region of White Farm Owners 


2. Not only is Forsyth blessed in soils and 
seasons, she is even more blessed by the fact 
that it is a white man’s farm area. The whites 
out-number the negroes in your country regions 
more than six to one. 

It is also a land of farming by farm owners. 
Three-fourths of your white farmers are farm 
owners—not tenants. The men who own the 
acres they till out-number the tenants nearly 
three to one. For the most part the farmers of 
Forsyth have their legs under their own tables 
as the Danes say. They pitch their crops as 
they please, they call no man lord and pay no 
man rent. They dweil under their own vines 
and fig trees unmolested and unafraid. They 
are, or have a chance to bw, unpurchaseable, 
unterrified, free American citizens; and we 
have urgent need of such citizens now-a-days 
in every developing democracy. 

But further. Forsyth is a densely populat- 
ed farm area. In this particular it ranks sec- 
ond in North Carolina. Only Gaston county 
has more country people to the square mile. 


Hopeful Farm Conditions 


Farm development is well night hopeless in 
a Sparsely settled area with heavy negro popu- 
lations and excessive farm tenancy; but every 
good thing is possible in a densely populated 
region of white farm owners. Churches can 
be liberally supported. Sunday schools can 
flourish. Special tax school districts can be 


16 


multiplied, and strong two and three-teacher 
schools can supplant weak, little, one-teacher 
schools. Interest can be aroused in the build- 
ing and maintaining of good public highways. 
Farms can grow in size and increase in equip- 
ment. The farmers can cease to be crop- 
farmers merely or mainly, and can move up in- 


to livestock farming and agricultural indus- — 


tries, as in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 
Land mortgages banks and co-operative credit 
unions can be organized and investment capi- 
tal secured on easy terms at low rates of in- 
terest. } 
All of these are within the range of easy 
possibility in Forsyth; they are well nigh hope- 
lessly beyond the reach of some forty odd 
counties in North Carolina. Nothing but clum- 


sy thinking, clogging tradition and dull uncon- 


cern could set narrow metes and bounds to 
agricultural prosperity in Forsyth. 


In the value of farm properties in 1910 your ~ 


county with $8,203,000 stood ahead of 80 coun- 
ties in the state. In per capita county wealth, 
with $333, you out-ranked 79 counties. In 
1913-14 you spent $11,477 upon new country 
school buildings, and in this respect only six 
counties made a better showing. At that time 
the value of your country school property was 
$72,000 ,and only 18 counties stood ahead of 
you. The average annual salary paid your 
rural white teachers was $285. It was not 
much, but it was more than they received in 
80 other counties. 


IT am not suprised at your high rank in these © 


particulars, but I am surprised at your low 
rank in certain other matters of prime import- 
ance. 


Il. Where Forsyth Lags. 


1. Your high rank in total and per capita 
farm wealth considered, I am surprised, for 


instance, to find that in 1913-14 only 7 of your — 


83 white school districts were levying special 


17 


school taxes for school support. Nighty-four 
counties made a better showing in the number 
of special tax school districts. The total fund 
raised in this way that year in your country 
districts was only $1,806. Only twenty coun- 
_ties made a poorer showing—14 in the foothills 
and mountains, 5 in the Albemarle region, and 
1 in the Pamlico country. On one side of you 
Yadkin raised $1,110 for better schools in 4 
special tax districts; but on the other side 
Guiiford raised $19,700 in 59 country schoo! dis- 
tricts. And remember that Forsyth ranks 2ist 
in per capita country wealth,, Yadkin 27th and 
Guilford 35th. Manifestly the country people 
of Forsyth lead in wealth, but not in willing- 
ness to use it for community advantages. 


Twin-Born Social Ills. 


You are far too well-off in the farm regions 
of Forsyth to allow 1,240 or nearly a fifth of 
the white country children of school age to 
be out of school the whole year through, as 
was the case in 1913-14; entirely too rich in 
town and country to allow 2,072 illiterate white 
persons in Forsyth to stay illiterate; or to be 
unconcerned about the 1,008 white voters in 
the county that cannot read their ballots or 
write their names. 


in passing, I want to say that the saddest 
thing about white illiteracy in this and every 
other county is the fact that 85 per cent of it 


is among persons 20 years old and over, who 


have passed beyond the reach of daylight 
schools and who if ever they are reached must 
be reached by people that are ablaze with the 
fires of religious zeal. Adult illiteracy is a 
church problem far more than a civic or se- 
cular problem. It is the fundamental home 
mission problem in North Carolina. And 
moreover it is a problem for country pastors 
and country churches, because 94 per cent of 


18 


white illiteracy in North Carolina is in our 
country regions. 


Behind In Church Membership 


2. And Forsyth lags in church mmbership. 
In 1906, the date of the last census of Relig- 
ious Bodies in the United States, only 42 per 
cent of the people of the county were on the 
rolls of any church whatsoever. Fifty-six 
counties made a better showing. Counting 
only the people of responsible ages, say 10 — 
years old and over, there were at that time 
15,809 people outside the churches in Forsyth. 
This multitude was 51 per cent or more than 
half of all the people of responsible ages in 
the county. Your country churchs and coun- 
try pastors can well afford to take to heart 
the 2,800 souls in the families of the white farm 
tenants of Forsyth, and the 1,960 native white 
illiterates in your country regions.The twin- 
born evils of tenancy and illiteracy are the 
two fundamental social ills that menace the 
country church everywhere in the South. The 
town churches have similar acute social prob- 
lems to deal with—not only in Winston-Salem 
but in every other growing city. The things I 
am saying may be shocking, but the sincerest 
friendship often lies in rough electric shock, 
said Mr. Emerson, and no saying was ever 
truer. 


Unprofitable Small-Scale Farming 


3. Coming now to consider the economic 
foundations of farming as a business in For- 
syth, the 1910 Census shows that your farms 
averaged only 39 cultivated acres in size, and 
the average number of acres cultivated per 
farm worker was only 12.4. The average farm 
was larger in 29 counties, and the acres per 
worker were more in 73 counties. 

These averages are entirely too small for 
profitable farming. As a result the production 
of crop values in the Census year was only 


19 


$175 per farm worker in Forsyth, and 66 coun- 
ties made a better showing. In 10 counties 
the crop values produced per farm worker were 
more than twice as large and in one county 
more than three time as large. 


One hundred seventy-five dollars per farm 
worker is a small figure to set over against 
$449 in the United States, $884 in Iowa, $783 
in Kansas, and $968 in Nebraska, where the 
average number of acres cultivated by a farm 
worker ranged from 83 in Iowa to 120 in Ne- 
braska. Your farms, for the most part, are 
too small to employ labor-saving farm machin- 
ery profitably, to stock with farm animals suf- 
ficiently, to rotate and diversify crops properly, 
to keep at a minimum the cost of producing 
your various crops, tobacco in particular, and 
to turn into your lock-boxes the largest possi- 
ble volume of profits year by year. We know 
at last in the United States that small-scale 
farming is usually unprofitable, and that well- 
balanced farming on a medium scale upon 
areas averaging from 80 to 160 acres gives the 
farmer the surest chance of success. 


I dare to say that every intelligent, indus- 
trious farmer operating upon a medium scale 
with a well-balanced farm system in Forsyth 
is comfortably ahead of the world, with some- 
thing in the bank laid up against a rainy day. 


Well Balanced Farm Systems 


4. A safely balanced farm system means 
_first of all food crops enough to feed the farm- 
er, the farmer’s family, and the farm animals, 
at least as far as staple farm supplies are con- 
cerned; second, it means farm animals enough 
to furnish all the horse-power and all the meat 
and milk, butter and eggs needed for home 
consumption; and third, it means in Forsyth to- 
bacco as the surest ready-cash crop. It would 
be folly for a farmer in our tobacco areas not 
to raise tobacco unless he can substitute for 


20 


it another cash crop of equal or greater value; 
and equally it is foolish for him to raise tobacco 
unless his barns and bins, cribs and smoke- 
houses are filled to bursting with home-raised 
food and feed stuffs. 


The only safe farming is a live-at-home farm- 
ing. Producing tobacco upon expensive time- 
credit at the supply-stores, and paying for 
farm supplies with cotton and tobacco money 
is near akin to economic insanity. 


Abiding Farm Prosperity 


5. Abiding farm prosperity in Forsyth as in 
every other county in the cotton and tobacco 
belt rests upon bread and meat production as 
a foundation. 


It is utterly commonplace to lay down a pro- 
position of this sort, but our failure to act upon 
this a-b-c of agriculture costs the South nearly a 
billion dollars a year. Since the War we have 
sent out of the Southern States more than 50 
billion dollars in ready-cash to pay for stand- 
ard, staple farm supplies that we neglected to 
raise at home. In the Census year our bill 
for imported bread and meat in North Carolina 
was nearly 120 million dollars. This year it 
will be around a hundred million dollars. Buy- 
ing farm supplies with cotton and tobacco 
money enriches the food-and-feed farmers of 
the Middle West but it has long impoverished 
the farmers of the South. As a result the per 
capita country wealth in farm properties in 
North Carolina is only $322; in the Middle West 
it ranges from $1,295 in Wisconsin to $3,386 in 
Iowa. In other words the bread-and-meat farm- 
ers of the West are from 4 to 10 times as 
wealthy as the cotton-and-tobacco farmers of 
North Carolina. 


The simple hard fact is that no farmer can 
afford to neglect food and feed production in 
order to raise cotton and tobacco, no matter 
what market prices they bring. For a half cen- 


21 


tury or so we have tried to get rich buying 
farm supplies with cotton and tobacco money, 
and surely we have tried long enough to know 
that it cannot be done. 


In per capita country wealth in farm proper- 
_ ties our older cotton and tobacco counties are 
among the poorest in the state. Anson, for in- 
stance, with $257 ranks 57th in per capita farm 
wealth; Caswell with $246 ranks 68rd; Person 
with $237 ranks 66th; Franklin with $227 ranks 
Vist; Halifax with $205 ranks 83rd; and Rock- 
ingham with $191 ranks 87th—not because they 
have raised cotton and tobacco these long 
years, but because they have neglected to pro- 
duce their own bread and meat while doing it. 


Are Forsyth Farmers Self-Feeding? 


6. It is highly important to know whether 
or not farming in Forsyth is safely settled down 
upon a home-raised bread-and-meat basis. The 
last Census shows that the food and feed con- 
sumed by man and beast in Forsyth county 
amounted to some 2 million 800 thousand dol- 
larss more than the farms of the county pro- 
duced. And this vast sum went out of the 
county in cold cash to pay the year’s bill for 
imported feed and food supplies—not for ‘ex- 
tras, dainties, and luxuries, but for standard 
bread-and-meat crops the farmers failed to 
raise at home. It was nearly $60 apaiece count- 
ing men, women and children. If it could be 
kept at home by live-at-home farming, or even 
a reasonable portion of it, the farm wealth of 
the county would be more than doubled in the 
next four years. 


But almost exactly half of your people are 
’ city dwellers. They are consumers not produc- 
ers of bread-stuffs. An inquiry of first impor- 
tance to the farmers of Forsyth is this: Are 
the farms of the county producing food and 
feed enough for the country population alone? 


22 Ue 


Nearly A Milliam Dollars Short 


I cannot say what they are doing in this way 
to-day, but I know what they were doing in the 
Census year. At that time the farms of the 
county failed to feed the farm folks and the. 
farm animals by nearly a million dollars— 
$980,000 to speak a little more exactly. This 
was the farmers’ bill in Forsyth for the farm 
supplies they needed for home-consumption and 
failed to raise. In the ten years it makes a 
total larger than the value of all the farm prop-: 
erties accumulated in Forsyth in 160 odd years 
of history. 


The food for the farm folks and the farm 
animals of Forsyth in 1910 amounted to $2,393,- 
000. The food and feed produced on the farms 
of the county the preceding season amounted 
to $1,414,000. The deficit was $980,000. This 
was the year’s bill of the farmer for imported 
farm supplies. Some $335,000 of it went for 
corn and corn products. Nine hundred and 
forty-two farmers or more than a third of them 
all spent an average of $60 apiece for feed for 
farm animals alone. The hay and _ forage, 
wheat and meat produced by the forehanded 
farmers of the county was all the country pop- 
ulation needed and something to spare for their 
short-sighted neighbors, but the surplus of 
these farm products did not begin to supply in 
addition the needs of consumers in Winston- 
Salem. There was a shortage of fowls for 
home consumtion amounting to some 75,000, 
and a shortage of eggs amounting to 110,000 
dozen. The country people either bought these 
articles of food or lived upon a scale of con- 
sumption far smaller than the averages for the 
United States. 


The simble fact is that the farmers of For- 
syth failed by $980.000 to feed themselves in 
the Census year, and in addition they missed a 
chance at $1,820,000—the sum that went to the 


23 


farmers of the West for staple food products 
to feed the city dwellers of the county. 


I may say in passing that Forsyth farmers 
are never likely to supply this demand of city 
consumers in Winston-Salem until the farmers 
- can turn their food products into cash at a fair 
price and proj{t as easily and as readily as they 
can market their tobacco. That is to say, 
Winston-Salem must provide market arrango- 
ments conveniences and facilities for home- 
raised food and feed supplies just as she has 
done for tobacco. The city must tempt the 
nearby farmers into bountiful bread-and-meat 
farming and reward them amply in the enter- 
prise. 

The Sensible Thing To Do 


But whatever Winston-Salem may do or not 
de toward turning over to the farmers at home 
nearly two million dollars a year instead of 
sending it to aliens and strangers in the West 
for staple food stuffs it is clearly sensible for 
the farmers of Forsyth to hold down on their 
farms the other million dollarss a year that 
they themselves sent out of the county the 
Census year for farm supplies they neglected 
_ to raise. 4 

Until this farm shortage disappears there 
cannot be any great accumulation of wealth in 
your farm regions no matter how high the price 
of tobacco in occasional years. The only way 
to raise the level of a pond is to stop the leak 
in the dam. The first thing to do in Forsyth 
is for the farmers to stop a million dollar leak 
in the dams on the farms at home. 

As far as the farmers are concerned abiding 
farm prosperity in Forsyth depends first of all 
upon the farmers feeding themselves. They 
can add a million a year to the country wealth 
of the county by doing it. And when this has 
been done they can then go after the two mil- 
lion dollars that Winston-Salem is sending 
abroad for food supplies year by year. 


24 


The first concern of farmers in the South is 
not markets for food crops but pantries barns 
and bins, cribs and smoke-houses filled with 
home-raised supplies. 


The Penalty We Pay For Not Doing IT 


Farmers with enough of these for home con- 
sumption and surpluses to sell can be worrying 
about market facilities; but so far in the South, 
the main cause of farm poverty has been empty 
larders, troughs and racks that cost us nearly 
a million dollars a year in Forsyth to fill with 
imported stuffs; that cost around a hundred 
million dollars a year to fill in North Carolina, 
and around a billion dollars a year in the South. 

Cotton and tobacco, in per acre values, are 
the two most valuable farm crops raised any- 
where in the world, and if we were only a self- 
feeding farm civilization in the South we would 
be rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice 
in ten years. 


lil. The Way Out. 


With these things said about conditions and 
causes that affect farm prosperity in Forsyth, 
let us now turn our attention to principles, 
plans and policies, ways and means of better- 
ment. And I must here be brief in an address ~ 
already too long. 


1. Larger Size Farms. 


First of all, the average size of your farms 
is too small for profitable farming, except in 
rare instances. For the most part you are 
farming on a scale too small for large profits. 
Nearly exactly seven-tenth or 1836 of your 
farms are less than a hundred acres in size, 
counting both improved and unimproved land. 
Your medium scale farms, from one to five 
hundred acres each, are only 30 per cent of the 
total number of farms. These are the farms 
that offer a chance under good management 
for reasonable returns upon capital invested 


25 


and labor expended. There are only 13 farms 
of more than 500 acres in the entire county, and 
none of more than a thousand acres. But farms 
can grow larger in a region of farm owners; 
they inevitably tend to be smaller and smaller 
in an area of excessive farm tenancy. 


2. More and Better Livestock. 


With farms of larger average size, the farm 
area of the county can be sufficiently stocked 
with farm animals. The one-horse farm of 35 
acres, as we clumsily say in the South, if even 
lightly stocked needs one horse or mule, 2 milk 
cows, 2 other cattle, 2 hogs, 6 pigs, 7 sheep, 6 
lambs, and 50 laying hens, or livestock of this 
amount in some such combination, in order 
to furnish enough meat, milk and butter for an 
average farm family, and at the same time 
to consume surpluses and waste, restore soil 
fertility, and distribute labor profitably through 
out the year. 


In 1910, Forsyth was 40 per cent below the 
level of even a lightly stocked farm region, 
without considering your 138,000 idle, wilder- 
ness acres. Manifestly you need more and 
better livestock. I say this although in both 
particulars Forsyth already holds a prominent 
place among the 30 foremost counties of the 
state. 


Without sufficient livestock our gospel of ro- 
tation, diversification, permanent pastures, 
winter cover crops, silage and silos is pure sen- 
timent and not sound business. There is little 
or no profit in livestock fattened on bought 
feed. There is profit in livestock of good breeds, 
0h medium size farms, fattened on home-raised 
feed; and the necessity for producing such 
feed on the farm forces the farmer to keep his 
land in crops of some kind the whole year 
through. lLivestoock require and reward diver- 
sified farming. No safely balanced farm sys- 
tem is possible without farm animals in suffi- 


26 


cient quantity. Of course it goes without say- 
ing that as rapidly as possible farmers will 
substitute for common scrub animals well bred 
stock that take on weight easily and cheaply. 

There might be a breeders’ association in 
each of your fourteen townships. High-bred 
sires in sufficient numbers ought to be co-oper- 
atively owned and used all over the county. 
Community livestock shows and blue ribbon 
prizes might easily stir the pride of the average 
farmer in Forsyth. I say this with your Morav- 
ian, German, Scotch-Irish, and English ances- 
try in mind. The love of farm animals was 
second nature in your forefathers. 


3. More Abundant Operating Capital 


So far, the wealth of the farm population in 
Forsyth is mainly in farm lands, farm buildings, 
farm animals, farm tools and implements. 
There is too little ready cash circulating freely 
in the farm regions for 52 weeks of the year; 
too little cash operating capital; and too much 
expensive time-credit at the supply- stores. 


This hard situation is well night universal 
in the South. It is crippling, disabling, and dis- 
couraging; and it must disappear before we 
can have abiding prosperity in our farm areas. 
Our cotton and tobacco money descends upon 
us like an avalanche during the market months. 
It produces seasonal, not permanent prosperity. 
When our bills are all paid, and the year’s bal- 
ance sheet is struck, our left-over cash is 
hardly sufficient to grease the house-cat prop- 
erly. And then during the nine, long, lean 
months of the growing and harvesting season 
we operate on expensive credit. It is the high- 
way to improvidence and poverty, as we all 
ought to know after 50 years of pinching exper- 
iences. 


Now, no farm civilization ever accumulated 
great wealth unless it was self-financing; and 


27 


no farmers can be self-financing unless dai are 
. self-feeding. 


But in a densely populated area of whine farm 
owners the way out of difficulty is wide open. 
In the first place, such farmers are free agents 
and can lay down their farming on bread-and-. 
meat foundations. Farm tenants in America 
never can do it without more outside help than 
they are ever likely to receive, [ am _ sorry 
to say. In the second place, they can bunch up 
and organize land-banks and _ credit-unions, 
The old world farmers have learned to assem- 
ble resources, organize credit machinery, manu- 
facture credit, and finance themselves. Some 
15 million co-operating farmers in 5,000 asso- 
ciations in Europe did a business among them- 
selves amounting to 7 billions dollars in 1914. 
Our Carolina farmers have sense enough to do 
the same thing; but they are everywhere con- 
servative and mighty slow to get busy with 
this fundamental problem of cash operating 

capital. 


4. Decreasing Dead Capital 


The farmers of Forsyth have three and a half 
million dollars of dead capital in $139,000 idle, 
' wilderness acres; and I am reckoning this 
total on the low average value of this land in 
the 1910 Census. It probably could not be 
bought for twice this amount. More than half 
_ the entire area of the county is unimproved. 
Here is elbow-room for 1200 new farm families 
on 75 acres each, with 50,000 still left over for 
woodlot uses. 


If you could attract into Forsyth 1200 farm 
families from south Wisconsin, say, where they 
have been bred to the business of tobacco grow- 
ing, dairy farming, cheese factories and cream- 
eries, they would add seven and a half million 
dollars to th farm wealth of the county; and 
they would increase the annual production of 
farm wealth by $1,800,000. In other words, 


28 


they would nearly double your present farm 
wealth, and the present annual product of your 
farms. 


The farmers of the Middle West are swarm- 
ing out of this area over into Canada and down 
into Pan Handle Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkan- 
sas. Why not into Forsyth county, North Car- 
olina? me 

Every man jack of them ail is acquainted 
with the Twin-City brands of tobacco, but what 
they don’t know is whether Winston-Salem is 
in Forsyth or Formosa. Forsyth is not on any - 
map they know. It is weli worth your while 
to put Forsyth on the map. 

In my opinion it is highly important to put 
very Carolina county on the map. We have 
too many idle, wilderness acres in this state— 
some 22,000,000, all told. There are some 200,- 
000,000 such acres in the South. We have too 
much dead capital buried in unimproved farm 
lands—entirely too much; and we sorely need — 
the Americanized farmers of the Middle West, 
who are bred to the business of livestock and 
dairy farming. Beef production is moving east- 
ward out of range production into farm pro- 
duction; and with our immense area of unused 
land, we occupy a position of immense stra- 
tegic advantage. ; 


But we are about to miss the greatest opor- 
tunity in our history, because we are crop-farm- 
ers merely or mainly in the South. It takes a 
generation or two to breed ae farm 
population to livestock industries; and we are 
not so bred, while these western farmers are. 


5. A County-Wide Chamber of Commerce 


I should say that Forsyth needs a county- 
wide chamber of commerce, composed of farm- 
ers, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, teach- 
ers and preachers, representing every commun- 
ity and every business and social interest of 


29 


this entire people. Such a body might be busy 
(1) investigating conditions and problems of 
every sort, (2) organizing, educating, and ener- 
gizing everybody in every field of vocational 
and social activity, (3) revealing home advant- 
ages and opportunities to the home folks of the 
county and spreading the name and fame of 
Forsyth to the ends of the earth (4) creating 
interest in better school and church support 
the whole county over and sponging sheer-illit- 
eracy and near-illiteracy off your map. (5) 
backing the farm demonstration work and the 
boys and girls club work, (6) promoting com- 
munity fairs, school fairs, and county com- 
mencements, (7) organizing land-banks and 
credit-unions, and so on and on—all_ these 
things and more, not in sporadic, fragmentary 
ways, but in an organized, consistent, persist- 
ent campaign year in and out. 

The work of such an organization quickly 
defines itself under good leadership, and scores | 
of ends and aims, ways and means will suggest 
themselves as the problems one by one are 
brought into the spot light by the activity of 
the various committees. You will not need to 
adopt a Trenton-Grundy County-Missouri plan 
of activities; you will soon enough evolve your 
own Winston-Salem-Forsyth County-North- 
Carolina plans, when you get under a good 
headway of steam. 

In conclusion let me remind you that every- 
thing is possible to a united people. And when 
- persona! greed yields to the common good, and 
private interests surrenders to the public wel- 
fare, the full possibilities of a community can 
be realized. 

In the language of The Book, Forsyth is in- 
deed “a good land,” and if her people can be 
united and generous in their devotion to her 
fortunes then surely they shall not lack any 
good thing in it.’ 


Microfilmed 
SOLINET/ASERL PROJECT 


ate - PRESS OF © 
‘MARKLAND PRINTING co. 
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. 


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WE are asking you to come and 
sell to us. We offer you for 
your products the best markets and 
fairest prices to be found in the 
State. 

We have no ordinances against 
peddling farm products. 

Our city lot and warehouses are > 
kept open for you to leave your 
horses and vehicles. They are yours 
without charge. | 

Our library advantages are freely 
yours. | 

The farm demonstrator’s room in 
the court house is for your use. In- 


formation regarding farm better- #4 


ment can be secured there. : 

In a very short while we expect } 
to have a womens’ rest room—next | 
to the farm demonstrator’s room— | 
it will be comfortably furnished #% 
and have modern conveniences. A ™& 


matron will be in charge to care for Hume 


your packages—she will not be 
allowed to accept a “‘tip’’ under Bag 
any circumstances—as you will be # 

our guests. ee: 


TY OF N.C. AT CH 


NIL 
00031715662 


FOR USE ONLY IN 
THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION 


THIS TITLE HAS BEEN MICROFILMED 


